1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for enabling streaming even if a dedicated player is not used and a small-capacity memory is employed when multimedia streaming is performed between portable terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the widespread use of portable terminals, with short-range communication capabilities such as Bluetooth® (hereinafter “Bluetooth”) or any other local area communication protocol, has become increasingly popular. In addition, not only headsets using Bluetooth, but also file transfer functions using Bluetooth, such as MPEG layer-3 (MP3)/multimedia file contents, business cards, phonebooks, etc., are being used between the portable terminals.
However, when a streaming service of multimedia file contents is provided between portable terminals, an overload may exist in file operations and data duplication during streaming between a server and a terminal. Further, due to its complex structure and dependency of the contents on a terminal-specific player, streaming service has not yet been commercialized.
In recent years, a technique for streaming multimedia file contents stored on a file-by-file basis using Bluetooth has been proposed (see US Patent Publication No: US20080019440), and a technique for streaming motion pictures between portable terminals in the same decoding environment has also been proposed (see US Patent Publication No: US20080177865)
When a communication service provider charges a high subscription fee for the use of the streaming service, it is not appropriate to use existing protocols (i.e., a Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)) for the streaming service between the portable terminals due to structural complexity, ineffectiveness, and functional limitations of the portable terminals.
In the US Patent Publication No: US20080019440, a method for streaming between terminals using a file-based communication scheme directly maps a file pointer of a virtual file in a terminal's player, and thus streaming cannot be performed by a conventional commercialized player. In addition, in the US Patent Publication No: US20080177865, two terminals must share the same decoding environment and the same player, and thus streaming cannot be performed by the presently commercialized player.
Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus and method capable of streaming a multimedia file between terminals by using a minimum memory capacity while overcoming structural complexity and ineffectiveness without being restricted by a terminal-specific player.